Trees and the man

From ancient history down to these modern times of ubiquitous exculpation, the beautiful, abundant, floral benefactors of relief and life in this tropical land have had a great rep. The banyan, with its great gnarled mass of branches and roots spread out over large distances and known to support vast ecosystems all on its own… the majestic and mythical Ashoka, with its erect bearing and bushy foliage, held sacred in three indigenous Indian religions… the great givers – mango, apple, jackfruit, coconut, amla, neem… the ayurvedic – khair, bael, kokam, soapnut… and the strong – mahogany, sandalwood and teak… All these are Indian born and bred through ages of light and darkness, storm and famine, despair and triumph… and have provided countless children natural props for play and rest, and great spiritual leaders ready-made platforms from which to espouse their philosophies of salvation to millions of desperate seekers after truth. The sight of these great big wonders spread over towns and cities, villages and fields, forests and jungles is so ingrained in the Indian psyche that the mere fact of their presence is taken for granted and dismissed perfunctorily as fundamental, with that unalloyed sense of universal timelessness that seems to come spontaneously to those of us born in the subcontinent.

They are now disappearing. I can see them going one after another after another – when the monsoons come and their dried up roots suffocated in the concrete of a zillion high and low-rise foundations bring them crashing down, when roads are extended and new ones built, when mass transit systems appear over whole pliable and fertile tracts that custodians of ‘development’ arbitrarily appropriate, over regions of the country no one ever heard of until the announcement of a Special Economic Zone or a new airport or a ‘Medical City’ or a mine. Forest cover in India is now estimated to occupy less than 22% of the total land mass in this country and that includes medium density forests, open forests and scrub lands – all terms, as opposed to 'Very Dense', that bring on that sinking feeling.

There is some time yet for the swan song to be sung to our natural national heritage, but in a country of 1.2 billion people and in an age when the wild tiger population is down to 1,400 and great battles are being fought every day over compensation for the take-over of land belonging to individuals for multi-national mining and other acts of (that haunting term again) ‘development’, I pray that I do not hear the first bars of that mournful tune in my lifetime.

Go Green, going Green, Green gone

If the most significant achievement in our common history as a species was the Industrial Revolution, then what does the very raison d'être of our present primacy in the affairs of the world leading onto what many believe is our imminent downfall and extinction, tell us about ourselves?
Will the ghosts of the great intellectuals (or thought-leaders as modern parlance would have it) of history breathe a great big silent sigh of relief?
Will the collective bequest of a history of magnificent triumph over adversity, of reason over superstition, of science over myth, of heroism over weakness mean nothing at all in the great quiet that will pervade this earth once we pass?
Will the God we praise in all His/Her forms and revelations literally cease to exist… at least to a consciousness that can recognize the everlasting value It holds?
Is our passing ever going to be disseminated and researched by chimerical beasts in an inevitable future non-human civilization?
Does the standard I bear right here right now, the cross I carry right here right now, the means I endure in a wish to serve an imagined end right here right now, even matter to the passage of the endless empty time that will suffuse the planet in an eerily vacant glow until the end of its existence?

The Copenhagen dilemma

Excerpt from a reply to an email

Copenhagen was a disgrace any which way you look at it.... I couldn't believe it when our 'Most Honourable' Environment Minister actually boasted in Parliament that 'India got its way' (a day after getting back to Delhi). There is much to say about development (in this country, at least) getting hit if strict norms for carbon reduction and stuff get implemented, but the fact is that we can very well do without most of the industrialisation and corporatisation taking place right now - especially if you look at the vast distance between those who currently have a chance to take part in the economy and those left on the way side. Clearly, something's wrong with the whole concept of development if you leave over a third of the country out of the loop, in terms of basic amenities like food, water, medicine and shelter. I can't really comment on China, seeing as how every little bit of pixel-ated news coming out of there is so restricted, but what folks are going to take back from Copenhagen is that India and China pretty much scuttled any chance of laying meaningful guidelines down - for the near future. Anything Barack or Angela or Gordon could or might have even wanted to do, stood no chance against an argument that basically said, 'You guys have fucked up for so long with the environment, and gotten so rich while doing it - WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU to tell us what we can or can't do now?'... A grass-roots movement for Climate Change really stands little chance of succeeding in India, when there are people on the ground who aren't really sure if they'e gonna be around tomorrow or starve to death tonight, you know...